flickering lights and amber smiles
by DarkBrightness
Summary: She has just enough light to pull him out of the madness. Slight Stein/Marie one-shot.


Disclaimer: I don't own Soul Eater.

I honestly have no idea what I just wrote.

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The shapes darted across the glow of his computer screen, wriggling at the edge of his vision, clawing at the corners of his eyes. Stein dragged his eyes to the spot where the figure had been, but it danced away into the darkness of his lab. There was nothing there. There was never anything there.

A snicker emerged from deep in his throat, hysteria threatening to break through and unleash itself upon the world. The snicker turned into a chuckle and then a guffaw, until he was laughing uncontrollably at nothing at all.

The world had always disgusted him, Stein knew. It always had and it always would.

He could remember being small, hands covered in sweat and blood and gore and everything else left over from his experiments. He didn't care what his victims did; no matter how much they bargained and pleaded and screamed, they still disgusted him. No one tried to stop him, anyway. Stein took what he wanted.

His hand shot out and suddenly everything that had been on his desk was on the ground—notes, sketches, his long-since cold coffee, the lamp that he hadn't turned on for days because he belonged in the shadows with the shapes that flickered in his dreams.

"Look at you, Stein," crooned a voice from somewhere in the darkness, and he didn't have to turn around to know that it belonged to a witch-woman with golden hair and golden eyes and a snake smile. "You're turning out even better than I thought. The madness does do its job, after all."

"Shut up," he growled, hands pressed against his face, fingers pulling at his messy hair. "You're dead. I killed you."

Medusa chuckled darkly, smooth as the wind of Death City and just as deceiving. Nothing was as pure as it seemed. Nothing got by without a hind of corruption, a sprinkling of evil.

"Oh, Professor. You never cease to amuse me."

Stein could feel her fingers wrap around his arm, touch ice cool even through his lab coat. Snakes were cold-blooded, after all.

He lashed out at her, and he could've sworn that his palm slapped solid flesh, but there was no Medusa—no black hooded cloak, no snake tattoos, no glowing cold eyes. There was nothing but an empty lab full of shadows and images that teased him from the perimeter of his vision. Stein found that he was breathing hard, gasping as if there would never be enough oxygen to fill his lungs. He wrapped his hands around his arms and dug his fingernails into the skin. The madness was all around; it was ripping him apart from the inside out, eating away at any hope he had left. But that was all right—he was alone, and no one would ever need to see him wither into nothing.

Except the blond head that peeked through the crack of the door and squinted into the darkness with a single eye. A pale hand reached through the crack and the lights flickered on, fluorescent and quivering as they illuminated the room.

Marie stared at Stein for a long time, at the way his fingernails tore into his forearms and the way his hair stuck out in all directions and the way his eyes fixed on her like deer in the headlights, crazed and terrified and ashamed. There was pity and worry alike in her face, and it tore him up on the inside.

She took a few steps forward and—gently, cautiously—pried his fingernails from his arms, frowning at the blood and the crescent-shaped marks they left behind. But she said nothing and instead starting gathering up the papers scattered on his floor, piling them in a neat stack and righting the lamp on his desk. Then she grabbed a towel from the sink and started mopping up the spilled coffee, silent all the while.

"All right, Stein," Marie said when everything was clean and organized, just the way she liked it. She smiled a small, sad smile up at him, and Stein realized slowly that there were no more shapes darting around in his peripheral vision. "Let's get you to bed."

He jerked as if he had just been stabbed because sleep meant dreams and dreams brought even more madness than waking. But Marie was giving him that soft smile, eyes amber and warm in the flickering of his fluorescent light bulbs, and he found himself complying. She gave him a gentle shove towards his bedroom and pulled off his stretched-out lab coat, and his shirt, and his worn out boots, and tucked him in like a child.

Marie smiled that smile again and whispered, "Sweet dreams, Stein," then flicked off the lights and turned to go.

His hand shot out without him telling it to, and closed around her wrist gently. "Stay," he croaked out through a hoarse throat; hoarse from screaming, hoarse from tension, hoarse from being alone.

Stein heard her let out a quiet breath in the darkness, and then there was a rustle of cloth and the mattress sagged a little as a new weight joined him. He could feel her warmth radiating towards him as she settled, though the only thing he could see in the dark was the shape of her slender shoulders next to him.

Within a matter of minutes, Marie's breath became slow and gentle. She was asleep.

Stein closed his eyes and felt his mouth curve up into something that might have been a smile.

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IF YOU FAVORITE WITHOUT REVIEWING I WILL FIND YOU. THAT IS A THREAT AND A PROMISE.


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